“I don’t want a big wedding,” she whispered.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Are you ready for me to pop the question yet? Or settling yourself into it for after we’re moved in?”
“After,” she eventually said. “Give me a couple of weeks after that.”
He hugged her against him so he could press his face into her hair and allow him a moment to forcibly drag his tears back into his eyeballs. Or at least blink them away. “Anything you want, baby. For life.”
Chapter Eight
Brita rolled into Alisse and John’s driveway fifteen minutes early the next morning. Before Brita even emerged from her car, Jordan had already flung the front door open and was racing down the sidewalk. She had her backpack on, and wore the navy short-sleeved, collared shirt and khaki shorts that were the school uniform.
“AuntieBee!” The girl remembered at the last moment to pull up short and hug her gently. “Thank you for taking me to Mote today!”
Brita managed to not laugh at her. “You’re welcome, sweetie. I like going to Mote. But what have we talked about running outside like that?”
The girl’s face turned pink. “Sorry. I forgot.”
Brita held her hand out to walk with her back to the house. “And you left the front door open.”
Alisse appeared in the doorway. “Oh, hey, sis.”
Brita released Jordan’s hand to give Alisse a hug. “We need to work on her running outside,” she whispered in Alisse’s ear.
Her sister, while a fantastic mother, hadn’t seen the things Brita had seen and didn’t share her worries.
“She’s excited, and she’s a kid,” Alisse said, her tone gentle. “Cut her some slack.”
“She can’t see out the viewfinder. What if it hadn’t been me?”
They ended the hug and Alisse gave her the same half smile, half shrug that told Brita she was just humoring her.
From the kitchen, Brita heard a TV playing, accompanied by the warm sound of John’s laughter.
“B’s here,” Alisse called out as they walked down to the kitchen.
“I heard.”
He stood when they entered the kitchen and gave Brita a gentle, careful hug. He’d taken plenty of turns relieving Ethan at home and helping care for her in the early weeks after her injuries, before she was able to care for herself. The cliché about him being like a brother truly fit her relationship with him.
“We really appreciate this, B,” he said. “Alisse said you guys were going out for dinner tonight. Can we get you a gift card to pay for it?”
“Thanks, but no. I’m happy to do it.”
“Let’s go!” Jordan bounced in place. “I don’t want to be late!”
Brita reached out and placed a hand on the petite girl’s head. “We’ll get going, don’t worry.” She was smaller than her classmates, but considering John’s mother and sisters had all been tiny, it wasn’t unexplainable. She looked more like a six-year-old than an eight-year-old, but sometimes they thought she had the mind of a twenty-eight-year-old.
“I’d picked a turkey sandwich for my lunch,” Alisse said. “Seriously, I don’t mind giving you money to buy something different.”
“No.” Brita pecked her on the cheek. “It’s fine. Just to clarify, I’m taking her back to my place, right?”
“Right,” Alisse said. “John will pick her up from you like he usually does.”
“You might get to see Uncle Ethan, if he gets off work early enough.”
Jordan bounced up and down again. “Yay!”
As they finally headed for Brita’s car, she thought about the afternoon a few weeks earlier, when they’d taken Jordan and George to the movies, giving Alisse and John a few hours alone. Ethan and his ex-wife, Maggie, had parted ways amicably after three years. Since George’s father wasn’t in the picture anyway, she’d had no problem with Ethan staying close to the boy.
They even included Maggie and George in holiday celebrations, and sometimes were emergency babysitters for the single mom.
And George and Jordan were all the “real kids” Brita wanted in her life. Thankfully, she and Ethan were on the same page regarding that topic.
Doesn’t this mean I’m thinking long-term?
Of course there were a lot of people who’d argue that eight years and still going could already be classified as “long-term.”
Hmm.
She’d table that mental discussion for now. But it was even more proof to her that she needed to give serious thought to having a talk about long-long-term plans with Ethan.
* * * *
“AuntieBee, are we going to go eat lunch now?”
Brita had been watching the hypnotic movements of fish in the large shark tank. This was one of the things she found so soothing about Mote, the animals doing their thing.
It wasn’t even due to the half a Xanax she’d taken upon their arrival a few hours earlier. That had pretty much already worn off.
“Yes, sweetie. I believe that’s the next stop.”
She turned to see where the two teachers were conferring with one of the Mote workers in the patio area. Apparently, the third teacher who was supposed to be there had called off sick and had spent the early morning hours in the ER with what turned out to be a kidney stone. During the morning session, Brita had dropped to the back of the pack so she could bring up the rear and keep an eye on all sixty-eight kids at one time.
It boggled her mind that the other two women and one man who were acting as parent chaperones were either busy talking to each other, or on their phones, instead of paying attention to the kids.
It also boggled Brita’s mind that they didn’t have more chaperones.
Sure, the kids weren’t wandering around a large, open area and there were no worries about them scattering in all directions. And yes, while this was out in the “public,” it wasn’t like they were in the middle of a crowded city.
Still, the lack of awareness of their surroundings staggered Brita. She wanted to walk up to them and smack them and knew that might possibly be frowned upon.
The boxed lunches were ready and waiting, ironically, stacked in four large boxes. The adults already knew about Brita’s disability, so no one asked her to help carry them. The plan was to troop across the road, the Ken Thompson Parkway, to the park next door to the other part of the Mote Marine complex. That’s where the manatees, sea turtles, dolphins, and other larger animals were housed for display, rehab, and research. It was also where the second part of their day would begin following lunch.
They all headed toward the front entrance. Jordan went ahead to join her friends, while Brita hung back and took yet another head count. The teachers and parents led the way outside and across the main parking lot. The kids were supposed to bunch up at the road, wait for everyone, and then cross at once, with the adults acting as crossing guards for safety.
They were halfway to the road when Brita heard a strange, deep growling noise that registered outside the high-pitched voices and laughter of the kids. Turning, as did most of the kids, she saw a man emerge from the shadows of trees next to the sea bird rehab center on the other side of the parking lot, closer to the water, and start running toward the middle of the pack of kids.
He…at first Brita hesitated because she had a hard time reconciling what she was seeing. Standing at least six five, and close to three hundred pounds, he looked like an extra out of a horror movie. Ragged clothes, leather gloves stained with what looked like fresh blood, and over his head a dirty, grey cloth hood with eye holes ripped into it, tied around his neck with a cord. He made deep, inhuman growls and animalistic roars.
Then she spotted the large butcher’s knife in his right hand, at least twelve inches long.
Instincts and training kicked in, slamming into her brain and spurring her into action.
“Run!” Tuning out the screaming kids and adults, Brita felt time slow and slip as she ignored her own pain and ran to intercept the man, to put herself between him
and the kids.
She also drew her nine millimeter Glock 26 from the belt holster in the middle of her back, which had been concealed by the long tail of the short-sleeved shirt she wore, unbuttoned and open, over her tank top.
“Stop! Drop the knife! I have a gun, don’t make me shoot you!” she screamed at him as she brought the gun up while running. “Freeze! Down on the ground, now! Drop the knife and get down on the ground!”
He was maybe thirty feet away and closing fast. As she stopped she caught herself when she felt her sneakers skidding on shells and debris that had made its way onto the asphalt parking lot surface from the grassy areas surrounding the lot. Behind her, from the street, she heard tires screeching and horns honking, followed by the metallic crunch of a car crashing into something substantial enough to stop its momentum, but she didn’t dare look.
“I have a gun and I will shoot you! STOP AND DROP THE KNIFE, NOW!”
The assailant didn’t stop. The knife came up as he raised his right arm at about twenty feet from her. If he got close enough to stab or grab her, in her condition, she wouldn’t be able to fight him off, and she knew it.
She fired, emptying all ten rounds into his torso while her hearing spun into a muffled, high-pitched whine from the reports.
Hitting the magazine eject button with her right thumb to drop that mag, she’d already reached to her back pocket with her left hand for the spare mag she carried and slammed it into place, tripping the slide lock to release it and chamber a round. Then she edged up to the man’s still form and brought her right foot down onto the knife’s blade.
Three more men, all dressed in black and with bandanas covering their lower faces, ran toward her from the trees from where the man had emerged. As she brought the gun up again, she couldn’t hear any words they might have been saying over the ringing in her ears.
“Freeze! Down on the ground! Now!” and she bit back the urge to follow that with sheriff’s office. “I will shoot you if you do not comply! DOWN ON THE GROUND!”
The men slid to a stop and froze, eyes wide over the bandanas covering their lower faces as they stared at the fallen man.
It was only now she realized that all three men held small cameras.
“All of you! Down on the ground, NOW!”
The men exchanged glances before dropping to their knees and then complying.
“Empty your hands and put them behind your heads! Now!”
Only when they’d all done that did she finally glance down and kick the knife out of the guy’s limp hand with her foot before she painfully crouched to pull the hood far enough up his neck that she could feel for a pulse with her left hand.
Nothing.
She would have been shocked if he’d had one, considering she’d just put ten hollow points into his torso at close range. Even if he’d had a vest on, the force of the ten slugs she’d hit him with would have seriously injured him.
Backing away from the guy and the three prone men, she dug out her cell phone, which had been tucked into her front left pocket, and dialed 911. Putting it on speaker mode so she could keep an eye on the men, she barely made out the sound of the dispatcher answering over her ruined hearing.
“911, what is your emergency?”
She knew she was shouting, but between the adrenaline and not being able to hear well, she didn’t want to have to say it twice.
“Shots fired, main Mote Marine complex, south side of the Ken Thompson Parkway. Subject down. Roll EMS and deputies. This is Detective Brita Delgado, retired, Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office.”
She gave her old badge number, then repeated it. “I shot one assailant, male, armed with a knife and attempting to attack a group of third-graders in the parking lot. I am currently holding at gunpoint three masked men I believe are his accomplices. Repeat, I am armed and holding them at gunpoint. I do not know if they are armed or not.”
She wasn’t sure, but thought she heard sirens approaching in the distance. Brita was desperate to make sure Jordan and the other kids were okay, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off the three men she now held—
Well, technically not in custody, since she wasn’t active law enforcement. At bay would be a more accurate term, even though they’d complied with her orders.
She heard sirens turn onto the Ken Thompson Parkway from the main road running down the center of the barrier island where the facility was located. She raised her left hand, cell phone and all, and took another couple of steps back, away from the suspects, as the marked cruiser roared into the parking lot.
She immediately recognized her old friend, Major Dave McConnell, as he got out of his cruiser after barely letting it roll to a stop first. When he drew his gun on the men, she immediately holstered hers and raised her right hand as a second cruiser roared up behind his, the deputy also jumping out with his sidearm drawn.
“She’s one of us,” Dave told the other deputy. “Brita, what happened?”
Only then did she feel comfortable lowering her hands and disconnecting the 911 call after saying, “Officers are on scene. Thank you.” She tucked it into her front pocket. “The guy I shot attacked us with a knife.”
She finally looked over at where approximately half the kids were safely huddled around one of the teachers and a mom on the far side of the two-lane road—including Jordan, Brita was relieved to see—and the rest were huddled on this side…
Except one girl, who was being held by the man, in his arms, and she wasn’t his daughter. She was crying and had thrown her arms around his neck, and Brita spotted blood trickling down her leg from her knee.
At least she was alive and didn’t seem to be seriously injured.
Traffic in both directions had stopped. Two of the cars that had been heading from the main road and driving toward the east end of the spit had pulled off onto the shoulder at skewed angles, like they’d tried to avoid a collision. On the far side of the road, a car had run into a palm tree, which now sat askew. The driver was still behind the wheel and moving. The air bag had deployed.
Returning her focus to the scene in front of her, all three men were now handcuffed on the ground. Dave looked up at her after talking into his shoulder mic and pointed at his cruiser. “Go ahead and put it on the hood for me, please.”
Brita walked over to the cruiser, leaving the empty magazine on the ground where it’d landed. There, she removed the magazine from the Glock, as well as ejected the round from the chamber and left the slide locked open, before she put the stray round back into the magazine and laid everything on the hood. After fishing her driver’s license, concealed carry permit, and federal firearms license from the small wallet she carried, she also laid them next to her gun and took a couple of steps away from the cruiser.
She didn’t know the other deputy, but apparently Dave had already told him the long version of who she was, because he seemed to not deem her a threat. He went to check the perp, pulling the cloth hood completely off the guy’s head, as well as a black lycra hood he’d also worn under that. He verified the guy had no pulse as multiple sirens closed in from the main road.
Then he looked at the knife, which now lay about five feet from the guy’s hand. He stood and knelt over it, frowning. Reaching down with his gloved hand to touch the blade with one finger, his eyes widened.
“What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?” Not that anything about the entire situation was “right,” but she knew that fuck me look well from her years on duty.
He looked up at her. “It’s plastic.”
Chapter Nine
Ethan had been on his way back to his office after lunch when his radio exploded from dispatch with call-outs about multiple shots fired at Mote Marine.
His stomach fell, but since he wasn’t specifically paged, he tried to keep his mind on traffic and not on worst-case scenarios. Especially since they were reporting an armed assailant was the only casualty, and it was a civilian shooter.
When the coroner’s van was dispatched a few minu
tes later, and several of the extra EMS rigs originally dispatched had been recalled to their stations, he relaxed a little. Hopefully it wasn’t an innocent person who’d been shot, but if it was a single casualty, that was far better than a mass shooting.
He hated that he was so jaded by current world events that he could feel relief over “only” one casualty.
Then his cell phone rang a couple of minutes later, as he was almost back to the office. He hit speaker mode. “Detective Neri.”
It was his major. “You need to get over to Mote right now.”
“I just heard on the rad—”
“No, you don’t understand. You need to get there. It was Brita. She shot a guy attacking a bunch of kids.”
Now Ethan’s blood turned to ice. He dropped the phone into his lap so he could hit the lights and sirens on his unmarked cruiser.
“Is she okay? Are the kids okay?” He’d totally forgotten Brita was chaperoning Jordan’s class there today.
“One of the kids slipped and fell and nearly got hit by a car and is scraped up a little, and another driver got banged up hitting a tree when some of the kids ran into the road to get away from the guy. No other serious injuries. Perp is the only DOA. But Dave McConnell’s on-scene and called me, specifically asked for you to be notified.”
Traffic parted ahead of him like the Red Sea as he got turned around and aimed for the John Ringling Parkway to get across the bay from downtown.
“Tell him I’m en route. ETA fifteen.”
“10-4.”
Ethan ended the call and tried to stay calm, but it was impossible to stay calm when it was one of yours.
Literally.
Two of his, if he counted Jordan.
Due to all the emergency vehicles already blocking the roadway, he couldn’t drive as far down as Mote when he turned onto the two-lane Ken Thompson Parkway. He ended up having to park on the street down from the main entrance, and ran the rest of the way after clipping his badge to his belt.
Someone had draped a sheet over the body stretched out in the parking lot. Ethan spotted Brita partially sitting on the back seat of a cruiser, but with the door open, her feet on the pavement, and Jordan wrapped around her like a koala on a tree.